Oz: Broken Kingdom

 Since switching to a more capable smartphone, I decided to install some of the recent Oz mobile games.

One of the more interesting ones is Oz: Broken Kingdom. At first glance, it looks like a standard fighting RPG with some dark Oz theme.

And...

Well...

It is.

But, it's a book-based dark Oz theme!

The game's story follows a young woman named Ophelia who washes up on the shores of Oz with her cat, who unfortunately died during the trip, but is revived when she's transformed into a crystal cat by Ozma. Ophelia becomes a freedom fighter for Oz, joining with the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and Lion.

A strange darkness has fallen over the Land of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the East has been revived and many creatures and folks have become aggressive, some even reversing their personalities. Dorothy and the Wizard are missing. Ozma has put the magic of Oz into gems to help protect it. It's up to the freedom fighters to travel through Oz and set it free once again.

There are a lot of characters from the books you'll run into during play: Tik-Tok, "Lady" Ann of Oogaboo, Professor Woggle-Bug, Kalidahs, Polychrome, Mrs. Yoop, the three Adepts, the First and Foremost of the Phanfasms, Jack Pumpkinhead, and the Nome King. The big bad seems to be an original villain.

The game is played through a series of battles you enter by selecting "nodes" from a map screen. You pick one of the fighters and before you enter, you can choose what abilities you can use during the fight.

Each node enters a battle that could be one to five waves of no more than three bad guys per wave. You can choose from four abilities. One of these is free to use at all times. The others use mana, which if you've played other RPG video games, is your points for special moves. These can be offensive abilities, healing abilities, or abilities that will prepare you for a major attack on your next turn. Each turn gives you two mana to work with, and defeating a bad guy earns you an extra one.

And being an RPG, you also have a health meter that is drained as the bad guys attack you. You can use healing abilities or defense boosts to try to keep it from reaching 0. If it empties, you can use a life potion to continue your fight, but you can only do this once per battle.

Leveling up and "evolving" your heroes are of course included to encourage repeated play. The team levels up together, and experience points are earned by winning battles, completing tasks, opening chests won in the arena and upgrading abilities and companions. To "evolve" your heroes, you have to collect pearls. To upgrade your abilities, you collect cards and use essence to level them up once you have enough. Essence is earned all throughout the game with each battle, redeeming coins at the Well of Wonders, in chests won in the arena, and it's often given freely as a daily gift.

The game gives you free items every day. When you start the game, there's a screen that gives you a free gift each day, and signing in every day eventually gives you an extra one. The Great Tree of Oz gives you 25 free Emeralds every 24 hours, but the countdown to the next one begins when you collect them. Coins for the Well of Wonders in the Emerald City (which serves as the main base for the game) are given freely: a bronze coin is given once every 4 hours, and a silver coin is given once every 24 hours. The countdown to the next free coin begins when you redeem the last one. You can also purchase more coins with emeralds. Also, keep an eye on the mailbox in the Emerald City as it sometimes contains important messages that include free gifts.

The game also features an "arena," where you can fight other players throughout the world live. You pick two companions (who can be leveled up just like your abilities) to fight a randomly selected other player from anywhere in the world. Winning a match earns you trophies, losing a match costs you trophies. The more trophies you have, the higher your league, but if you lose enough matches, you can go back to a previous league. Defeating an opponent or their companion earns you a star, and when you earn 15, you can open a Star Chest which has more free items inside. Defeating your opponent instantly wins the match and earns you three stars and a chest of wood, silver or gold. Wooden chests take two hours to unlock, silver takes four, and gold takes eight, but you can use emeralds to open them right away or watch an advertisement to take an hour off of your wait time, but you can only do this once an hour. Chests contain essence, cards to upgrade your companions, and a few random items depending on what level chest you got: it could be a gem, a pearl or a coin for the Well of Wonders.

It's also possible to bolster your fighters with gems you can craft. Crafting takes essence and either ore or gems that are not equipped. You can craft ore into a common gem, then craft two common gems into an uncommon gem, and you get the idea. The higher evolved your heroes, the more gems can be equipped to them, and the more you're leveled up, the better the gems you can craft.

To encourage you to play every day, the game gives you daily tasks: upgrade three abilities, craft three gems, redeem five coins, win three battles with each fighter (you can go back and replay battles you're now overpowered for and it'll still count) and also purchasing emeralds (which I don't do). You are rewarded with experience points, essence and keys used to unlock certain nodes that'll lead you to special battles and treasures.

There is also a Rainbow Road event where you earn crystals. In Rainbow Road, you fight through increasingly difficult waves of baddies with handicaps: you only recover health after so many fights. (In regular battles, you instantly go back to full health once the battle's done.) There are also other status effects.

This being a mobile game, there's of course an item shop where you can use emeralds, crystals, essence or actual money to make purchases. Among these are pearls, gems, more emeralds and essence, cards and even adding Jack Pumpkinhead to your team of fighters. So far, I've only bought an occasional number of life potions, which are four for $.99, which seems pretty fair considering it's an item in a digital game. Money might not exist in Baum's Oz, but micro transactions keep the development of the game going. So while I'm not a fan of sinking a lot of money into a digital game, consider making an occasional purchase as a tip to the developers.

Playing through battles costs energy, which is replenished one unit every five minutes. The amount of energy you have increases by one unit every time you level up. You can also replenish your energy with an energy potion. Each series of stages generally use progressively more energy, tapping out at 10 per battle.

Leveling up tip: if you perform really well in a battle, it's marked with three stars. You can replay any battle, but if you earned three stars, you can "raid" it instead for the same amount of energy it would take to play it. Raiding gives you all the rewards you would have gotten for playing through. It's a good way to earn more essence and experience points if you have extra energy and aren't ready to progress further into the game's battles. Note that raiding is not counted towards winning a battle with a character for your daily tasks.

For being this type of RPG, the story is fairly well-done and the graphics are quite beautiful and detailed, although some depictions of the Oz characters are rather unique. The sound is also rather immersive, although it can be turned off. The Android version uses your Google login to record your progress, so presumably (but I haven't tested this) you can continue playing if you switch to another device.

If you're a gamer who enjoys Oz, Oz: Broken Kingdom might prove quite a bit of fun. It's available for iOS and Android mobile platforms.

Windham Classics' The Wizard of Oz

Sometime back, I talked about the first digital Oz game, Adventure in Oz for the TI-99/4A. In that blog, I mentioned I had previously (erroneously) believed Windham Classics' Wizard of Oz game to be the first. But I haven't blogged about that game before.

So let's fix that.

Windham Classics was a series from Spinnaker Software that presented five games based on literary titles. The first couple were platformer games that had a menu of commands to bring up. These were Alice in Wonderland (based on the two Alice books by Lewis Carroll) and Below the Root (based on the Green Sky Trilogy by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and actually served as a continuation of the story of the books). There was also Swiss Family Robinson, a real-time text adventure featuring many puzzles. The final pair were a couple of elaborate text adventures with graphics and music to enhance the gameplay. These were Treasure Island and The Wizard of Oz.

It's been awhile for some, but I've played and completed all of the games. They were available for several computer systems, including DOS on the IBM PC, the Commodore 64 and the Apple II. I played them through emulators, specifically the Commodore 64 versions.

Loading The Wizard of Oz (and Treasure Island) in the Commodore 64 can be challenging for the novice user. Most emulators let you select the file you need to load ("wind") and enter it automatically. The problem with these games is the long loading time. The emulator CCS64 speeds it up right away and makes the loading time no problem with the default settings. For other emulators, such as Frodo and Vice, you need to ensure the type of drive being emulated is a standard 1541, and that the main drive (Drive 8) is the only one being emulated. You can also select speed up options to help cut down the wait to the Windham Classics loading screen. The game will require you to swap discs, which is possible with emulators, but you might want to make sure you know how to do before settling in to play a game. It's also worth noting that the game does require quotation marks, and on the C64, the equivalent is holding down the shift key and pressing 2.

The DOS version I have played, but the versions online are lacking many of the game's files, so the game can't be completed after you meet the Wizard. The game came on the large floppy discs encased in cardboard, so for someone to get those files, they would not only would need to own that version, they would also need a drive capable of handling those discs. The Apple II version seems to be complete.

My recommendation for which version to play goes to the Commodore 64 version. Not only is it complete, but the graphics are in full color.

The game's story features an expanded version of The Wizard of Oz that can be played through. You play as Dorothy and as you travel around Oz using an interesting parser. In addition to moving by using the commands N, NW, NE, E, W, SE, SW, UP, DOWN, ENTER, EXIT to navigate the game, and the standard "TAKE ITEM" style commands, you can also address characters with commands such as "GLINDA, TALK EVIL WITCH."

The story expansion is several features from The Marvelous Land of Oz. As you head west after meeting the Wizard, you find Mombi's cottage and are joined by Tip when you escape. Along the way to the Witch's castle, you build Jack Pumpkinhead and bring him and the Sawhorse to life. Mombi's attempts to thwart the return of the Scarecrow to the Emerald City in Marvelous Land are now turned into tricks by the Wicked Witch. The Wizard names Jack his successor instead and when you head south, you run into Jinjur and have to head back to the Emerald City and escape by building the Gump. After falling into the Jackdaws' Nest, you have to return to Emerald City once again, this time bringing an army of tin soldiers who chase away Jinjur's army. In addition, the Hammerheads are beaten by putting everyone to sleep with a magic music box and commanding none other than Tiktok to carry your friends over the hill.

Probably the most controversial change made to the game's story is Glinda at the end revealing that Tip is the lost prince of Oz. He's not a transformed Ozma, just a missing prince. It's a little disappointing given the legacy of the Oz characters. Making Tip a girl would have been a bit more palatable.

For anyone who enjoys retro gaming and Oz, it's worth playing once. However, given the linear style of the game, it's unlikely anyone will be playing it many times unless they want to experience it again.

You can watch a playthrough here.

MyAbandonware.com has downloads for the partial DOS version as well as the Apple II and C64 versions.

The Classic Adventure Solution Archive has a walkthrough if you need help solving the puzzles as well as links to more information about the game.

Below are pictures of the game's packaging from the Computer Game Museum.

Playing Adventure in Oz

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the first Oz computer game, Adventure in Oz for the TI-9/94a. Since then, I've played it a few more times and have some hints... If you want them.

Find the yellow brick road or red brick road. Both lead to the Emerald City. It is also on these roads that you find the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Lion.

Your companions help out, which typically breaks down into preventing you from wasting a turn. The Tin Woodman will cut down trees to cross ravines and fight the Fighting Trees. The Lion will scare off other animals from attacking you. I have yet to find if the Scarecrow helps with anything.

Ozma's palace vanishes as soon as you are done there. You must go directly west of the location I marked on the map below to find her.

The backwards road is very simple: just travel west if you want to go east, go east if you want to go west, go north if you want to go south, and go south if you want to go north. Be careful that you don't get complacent repeatedly tapping keys.

While there are no onscreen instructions telling you which direction the roads are in, sticking to the yellow brick road in Munchkin or Winkie Countries actually lead you to the characters the Wizard wants you to find.

To cross a river, travel north or south and head back to the river to see if a little man pops up to ferry you across. This will likely take multiple tries.

If you come across a lake or mountain range, go another direction.

The following map has been compiled from multiple playthroughs of the game. Each X is the location of the important sites of the game: the Wizard's Palace, Ozma's Palace in the North, the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West, Glinda's Palace in the South, and the Woggle-Bug's home in the East. These are the locations, but there are many obstacles between the Emerald City and them.

You can find the game and how to play it in the blog I linked to. Happy Adventure in Oz!

Adventure in Oz

Last week if you'd asked me "What was the first Oz video or computer game?" I would have said the Windham Classics Wizard of Oz. But I happened to be looking through the Classic Adventure Solution Archive yesterday, and I randomly decided to search "Oz."

As one does.

And I happened to find an entry called "Adventure in Oz." To be honest, I wondered if it was a mis-listing of my own text adventure "My Adventure in Oz." But it was something different, a game from 1983, predating the Windham Classics game by a year.

So, knowing there's a huge subculture of emulating old computer games online, I hit Google to see if I could find more information on this game, or even, find how to download and play the game myself. By the time I went to bed, I found a blog entry from someone who had managed to emulate and play the game and three different downloads of the game, plus finding it in another format and finding an emulator to run it.

The platform for the game was the TI-99/4A, a short-lived early computer from Texas Instruments. How was the game packaged?

This isn't box art. It's cover art. "Same thing," some classic gamers might say, but wrong. This is a book. Instead of putting the games on disks, tapes or cartridges for sale, the code for the game was printed in the book and those wanting to play it had to enter it manually before they could. Well, you don't risk getting a corrupted file. Just have to make sure you do it right and not get a typo. The fun thing is, the book is available for free online viewing at Archive.org. This means that if you REALLY want to play it old school, you can type in all twelve pages of code into an emulator and create the files you'd need to play the game. Luckily for me, it was already done and available in three different places.

"Adventures in Oz" requires a number of expansions to play. In the emulator Win994a, I had to go to preferences, turn on the memory expansion option, turn it to the 16Bit Fast addressing, and the speech synthesizer. Furthermore, you have to load the TI Extended Basic cartridge, which the emulator comes supplied with an emulated version of. After loading the disk and the cartridge images into the emulator, it's time to get started. You press a key to begin the emulator, select the number for the Extended Basic prompt, and then enter the command—in all caps—RUN "DSK1.OZ" and press enter.

Alternately, you could enter RUN "DSK1.RAINBOW" and hear a computer system from 1983 synthesize "Over the Rainbow" in one minute...

Want to hear #OverTheRainbow from #TheWizardOfOz played by a TI-9/94? #Oz This is a side program found with the program "Adventure in Oz," released by Steve Davis Publishing in 1983, the first ever Oz digital game.

A post shared by OzCon International (@ozconinternational) on Jul 29, 2017 at 8:27pm PDT

Anyway, on to the actual game.

The game features fairly decent graphics by 1983 computer game standards, a few synthesized bars of "Off To See The Wizard," as well as some sound effects and the above mentioned version of "Over the Rainbow."

Pressing any key launches the opening text/cinematic that identifies the player as taking the role of Dorothy and gets the idea across that you're carried in your house by tornado to the Land of Oz.

You start randomly in a location in Oz, and yes, all you do is press keys, each location giving you some sort of message. If you're trying to play, pro-tip, keep the caps lock key on as entering commands in lower case does nothing.

What exactly does the Map key do?

It brings up a book-based map of Oz, which shows your location with an X, so it's possible to get an idea of where you are. Steve Davis (no relation, as far as I know) says it's based on the International Wizard of Oz Club's map, which is why the Munchkins are on the right side of the screen, rather than a design matching Baum's Tik-Tok of Oz endpaper map. Yes, the in-game screens are colored to match the region of Oz you're in.

So, the concept of the game is that you go to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, who promises to send you back if you complete one of four tasks he gives you: get the Woggle-Bug's magic powder, Glinda's ruby slippers, Ozma's magic belt, or the Wicked Witch's Golden Cap. After receiving your orders, you must head out into that section of Oz to find the item you're looking for and return to the Emerald City.

Matching the tone of Oz and pre-dating The Secret of Monkey Island, this is a game where you can't lose and can't die, so you're free to explore Oz as you wish, but the game asks you to play in as few turns as possible. Going to a blocked off area (bodies of water or the Deadly Desert) results in no progress and a turn wasted. Checking the map also uses a turn.

I completed my first game in 88 turns, where I was tasked to get the Golden Cap from the Wicked Witch. I headed west from Emerald City, crossed a river and finally found the Wicked Witch.

I was using the first version of the game that I'd found for this one, which the other guy's blog entry said had typographical errors, so I assume those graphic glitches are a result of that. (Also, "Muncchkin.")

I was a little stuck for what to do here until a little cinematic started. I watched in surprise as a mass of black pixels representing Toto moved across the screen and a yellow patch appeared under the Witch, who disappeared into it.

With that done, it was back tracking to the Emerald City, and the game was complete. With a full round of "Over The Rainbow," I was back at the command prompt.

So, surprisingly, this old game actually has replay value with a varying quest and over 700 locations, probably at least half of them I didn't see on this play-through. Also, the game can be completed in a rather short time.

It's also a concept I'd like to see in a new Oz video game, exploring the Land of Oz with varying quests and puzzles. With the leaps and bounds computer and video games have come in the last 34 years, it could be quite an interesting game.

I stopped my writing to do another playthrough with a different disk image I found. This time I was tasked to get the Woggle-Bug's magic powder (Powder of Life or... ???), ran into a couple "Wishway" locations that can randomly teleport you anywhere in Oz, and a road that takes you in the reverse direction that you want to go in. Also, there was a skywriting witch cinematic in the Emerald City, although if anything comes of this, I don't know. So, the game uses the Land of Oz from Baum's books with music and touches from the MGM film, and also some elements from Ruth Plumly Thompson's books.

If you want to play this game, here's the disk I just played on my Google Drive. If you use Win994a, put it in the "Disks" subfolder in the programs' installation folder.

Now to finish, here's some additional screenshots.

The Land of Oz video game on Kickstarter

I don't typically copy/paste press releases that I get emailed here, but as I'm on a bus headed to Portland, Oregon for Oz Con International, I'm not exactly in the best place to write something original.

I've actually pledged to this Kickstarter, for a $20 reward level. If you like Oz in video games, this is worth checking out.

End me, begin press release.

~~~

Land of Oz RPG (Press Release)

A pixel video game set in the magical Land of Oz

Playwrights Haven has recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for their latest project, Land of Oz. Set years before Dorothy’s arrival, Land of Oz is an RPG that allows the player to traverse through Oz and interact with famous characters like the Wizard and the Nome King. Along the way, the player must make choices that will impact world and its inhabitants.

Land of Oz Kickstarter Link

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2063013267/land-of-oz-video-game

Land of Oz will be a PC exclusive and will be released sometime in July, 2017.

The Story

In the game you play as Captain Fyter, a tin soldier sent out west to investigate reports of flying monkeys being spotted over Winkie Country. Fyter is a character from The Tin Woodman of Oz, one of L. Frank Baum’s later novels in the Oz series. In the story, he was once human until the Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his sword, causing it to chop off his limbs until his entire body had to be replaced with tin parts (For more information, check out http://oz.wikia.com/wiki/Captain_Fyter )

By the time Fyter is sent out west, Oz is in a state of upheaval. The ruling monarchy has been overthrown by a mysterious wizard and the Wicked Witches have taken this opportunity to expand their influence.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that allows backers to donate to projects in exchange for rewards. If a campaign reaches its monetary goal, the money is then used to finance the project. If a campaign does not reach their goal, the backers keep the money that would have been donated to the project.

The Land of Oz campaign is using the money from kickstarter to partially fund the game’s music, coding and graphics. This will allow Playwrights Haven to expand the scope and quality of the game. A portion of the funds will also be used to cover licensing fees, Kickstarter's transaction fees, and backer rewards.

Rewards

Here is a short list of rewards being offered for Land of Oz backers:

$3 - You will be listed in the 'Special Thanks - Kickstarter Backers' section of the game's credits.

$10 - All of the above, plus:

A digital copy of the game when it comes out.

$20 - All of the above, plus:

An eBook describing the development of the game, from the kickstarter to post-production. You will also receive a digital copy of the music from the game.

$200 - All of the above, plus:

One of the Non-Playable Characters within the game will be named after you.

$300 - All of the above, plus:

Your NPC will have a side quest for the player.

Those interested in helping have until August 5th to donate to the kickstarter campaign ( https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2063013267/land-of-oz-video-game ). Besides donating, you can help spread the word about the project and follow Playwrights Haven on Twitter @Playwrightsfilm #landofoz

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Playwrights Haven is a multimedia group dedicated to providing entertaining products ranging from comic books, games, and film. Besides Land of Oz, Playwrights Haven is currently developing a graphic novel called ‘The Tanglewood Outcast.’

Return to Oz: the computer game

So, when Return to Oz was released, it received a flurry of merchandise. Among it was a computer game by U.S. Gold, available for the Commodore 64, the Amstrad CPC and the ZX Spectrum. The game was rather obscure, as are most games for such systems these days. I've managed to play and win the Commodore 64 version.

Aunt Em in the barnyard

The game's mechanics are a little odd. You would see a list of commands at the bottom of the screen. Selecting one, you choose from an item on the screen.

"Look" provides a description of the item you select. Sometimes there are clues to what to do in the game are hidden therein.

"Talk" allows you to talk to a character, or, in the Nome King's palace, guess at which object is the Scarecrow. If you already know what you're doing, you're not going to use this much, but it is required in some parts to advance in the game.

"Search" is a catchall for "open" or "examine," allowing you to find more items by looking at items on the screen. Yes, this is needed quite a few times to advance in the game.

"Get" allows you to add whatever items you find to your inventory, which is accessed by "List," but more on that later.

"Leave" lets you move on to another location.

Accessing "List," we see that Dorothy can sure hold quite a lot! (Not seen here: a ladder and a large mirror.) In this one and only submenu, you can select an item to drop (it won't always let you), use (another catchall term), and actually quit (or rather restart) the game.

The problem with this submenu is that every emulator I've played the game in (I don't have a real C64) uses a different key to exit the submenu. (Which is also how to cancel selecting an item from the picture on the screen.) CCS64 uses "shift," and Frodo for Android (which I used to take these screencaps with) uses the emulated F2 key. On the Java emulator I set up on my Oz website, you have to use the Caps Lock key. Basically, experiment until you find the proper key. (Shifting between options uses the space bar, while confirming them is, of course, the Enter key.) A similar issue has prevented me from trying the Spectrum version, which has wholly different graphics.

EDIT: I have since tried both the Amstrad and Spectrum versions. Bafflingly, in these versions "Quit" in the inventory submenu actually lets you leave the submenu rather than quit the game. I managed to finish the Amstrad version, but had problems with the Spectrum version.

The plot adaptation is rather faithful to the movie, but has some additions. In Dr. Worley's clinic, you have to find a tinder box before going to the operating table. (Like a lamb to slaughter...) This is used when everything goes dark so you can talk to the girl who whisks you to Oz. You actually don't go to Oz, but you use a sandboat to cross the Deadly Desert to Oz.

After recovering Tik-Tok, you have to go underground because the bridge to Mombi's palace is broken. Along the way, you face off against a nose on two legs (you use dust to make it go away), a flame-spurting carrot (somehow Billina destroys it) and a pit of lava. (You have to close the floor.)

An addition to Mombi's palace is that when you go to get Mombi's ruby key, you must drop your shoes either in the tower room or in that room before searching Mombi's bed.

On the Nome King's mountain, there's an optional quest to connect a tunnel leading to it to the one under Mombi's palace. (So perhaps it actually does have a connection to the movie.) Along the way, you run into a crab who can turn people to stone with the way it looks. (It simply blocks your path. It's defeated by showing it a mirror down the tunnel.)

The Nome King will not transform your friends, but says that if they fail all three attempts at freeing the Scarecrow, he'll send them to Mombi's palace. (The quest to connect the tunnels is to simplify returning to the Mountain.)

The ornament rooms are nothing like the movie, looking more like a junk room. The only objects that you can select from are a bottle, a bomb(!), a book, a brick, a baseball bat, and a vase. Which one's the Scarecrow? Well, one of these things is not like the other...

And, of course, those Ruby Slippers look stunning in those VIC-II graphics!

I was being sarcastic. They look just like your regular shoes with a dark grey interior instead of a light grey one.

And of course, at the end, you set Ozma free. Not by using "Search" on the mirror, you have to add it to your inventory and "Use" it to free Ozma. To get the ending, you drop the Ruby Slippers and leave the Emerald City. And look at that ending screen!

As I said, I made the game available on my Oz website through a Java-powered emulator. Right here!

Other sites have the Amstrad and Spectrum versions available for online play and download.

Here's some more screencaps.

Oz apps vol. 1

So, as I mentioned, I recently actually got a smart phone. So, with it there was a variety of apps to try and play with, and yes, there are a number of apps based on Oz in some form. Here's the first two I tried and enjoyed. (I also tried a couple apps called "The Complete Oz Vol. 1" and "The Complete Oz Vol. 2" which were the Baum books in an ebook format. However, I find accessing Project Gutenberg much more worthwhile, particularly as the pages appear to be static and I couldn't read the tiny type on my phone. Maybe if I had a tablet or a bigger phone, it would be worth it. They were free.)

Please note that these particular apps are for the Android platform and were used on a phone running version 4.1: Jellybean. They are available on the Google Play store. They also seem to be available on Apple products.



The Wizard of Oz by Boluga is an abridgement of Baum's first Oz book as an interactive picture book using Denslow's original illustrations. Some are simply animated (Dorothy melting the Wicked Witch) while a good many others let the user actually interact with the illustrations. Set the Scarecrow free, oil the Tin Woodman, and even fill the poppy field with more poppies!

I thought the interactive pages were fun, and they can be reset with an icon in the corner, but there seemed to be too few. Still, for only 99 cents, you can't complain too much.



Temple Run: Oz is the only digital game released for Oz the Great and Powerful. (Sometime I should tell you about the only Return to Oz video game.) It's a variant of the Temple Run game series, in which a player runs through a course, jumping over obstacles, sliding under them, running to the side of them, or making a very sharp turn.

Jumping is done by swiping your finger (or a stylus) on your screen up, sliding is done by swiping down, turning is done by swiping to the side you want to run to. Going to the side is done by tilting your device to the side.

By default, you control Oscar from the film, running without his coat or hat down the yellow brick road, pursued by the winged baboons. You have to stay one step ahead of them, so they don't catch you and carry you off to who knows where! But on the other hand, don't run into a rock or tree root or fall into a ditch because that would be quite... counterproductive. Also, there are plants that will try to snatch at you that you can run by, but running through them will slow you down and possibly let you get caught by a baboon. Along the way, you can pick up coins or (very rarely) a gem.

The game costs 99 cents to get, but the reason why it's so cheap is that you can buy more coins or gems (which will let you continue if you tap the screen quickly if you fail). The coins will let you purchase costume changes for Oscar adding a hat, or letting you run as "The Great Oz" (Oscar's stage persona at the beginning of the movie). Also, you can purchase an alternate character and run as China Girl instead. You can go ahead and spend more money to get coins to purchase these, or just keep playing the game and slowly build up your coins.

The game is actually pretty fun and the challenge actually makes for a lot of repeat playings. In addition, you can upgrade the game by downloading (for free) additional stages you can run to. I'm not sure if you unlock these when you get there, but the other stages are the Dark Forest, the Emerald City, and the Winkie Country.

Oz goes Social

I tend to stay away from Facebook games, however, a few get me, but only if they're based on stuff I care about.

SO, there's a game based on the MGM film The Wizard of Oz. It uses some nicely done 3D recreations of the places and characters along with film clips and vocal imitations of the film's cast (though the Dorothy voice leaves a little to be desired).

The game focuses on Munchkinland and the Yellow Brick Road. The tiny Munchkin town you land in starts off with only four little huts and the beginning of the Yellow Brick Road.

The Yellow Brick Road is incomplete, so you need bricks to finish it. To get bricks, you make them. To make bricks, you need ore, which must be mined. To do this, you set up factories that the Munchkins will work. To keep the Munchkins happy, you can build more homes, shops, restaurants, and a grain mill to keep a food supply ready. In addition, you can control Munchkins who can chop down trees and mine rocks for more wood and ore, and an easy to control fishing game to earn more food.

When you've made enough bricks to complete a new section of the Road, you can head down it and get a series of bonuses and mini-games. Additional items can also be made by "Ozifying" with Professor Levram (clearly Professor Marvel). You can also pick up shards of Glinda's old wand and summon her when you get five of them.

From time to time, the Wicked Witch of the West pops up and has her Winged Monkeys attack. You fend them off from damaging your buildings by clicking on them.

There's also a social element to the game. You can connect with Facebook friends playing the game by adding them as neighbors and helping in their own "Munchkinland." They can also staff buildings like Town Hall, the Bank, the Lollipop Guild and the Lullaby League. You can also send them items and other things they might need, probably the Ozziest aspect of the game.

What you can do is limited by energy. Most actions take up one unit of it, then it takes about four minutes (or a power-up) to recover a point. You get a higher energy level each time you level up. Possibly the wait time to replenish energy goes down with each level up, but in my time playing, it hasn't gone down noticeably, if at all.

There are also quests you can do that will reward you with more coins, energy, and items once completed.

You can also use Facebook credits (bought with real money) or do offers to earn Emeralds which can unlock or purchase items you couldn't without them. Emeralds can also be acquired without a purchase, but you'll get them slowly. Of course, this is one of the ways the developers intend to make a profit from the game, so if you really enjoy the game, you might consider an occasional purchase to show appreciation.

The game is, of course, based on the film and generally ignores the book, but I did get a surprise when Professor Levram mentions a hy-po-gy-raf, and a trivia question on the Yellow Brick Road asks what color Dorothy's shoes were in the book.

Overall, the game seems to owe origins to Sim City, but the bonus games and actual interaction take it to another level. Facebook games are usually pretty simple, so there's not much else to this that I've discovered yet.

Still, I've yet to get to the Scarecrow. Will he join Dorothy in Munchkinland or just be along the Yellow Brick Road? There's likely more to discover as you keep playing.

Play The Wizard of Oz on Facebook.